1© Brad Myers Brad Myers A/05-499A: Interaction Techniques Spring, 2014 Lecture 19: Physical Gadgets and their Interaction Techniques

Definitions and Synonyms Ubiquitous computing (UbiComp) - computing everywhere and anywhere Pervasive computing – (no separate definition) Ambient intelligence (mostly used in Europe) – environment is instrumented so it is sensitive and responsive to people Information appliances – Smartphone or PDA Context-aware computing – mobile device that knows its surroundings, such as location, light, sound, etc. from Wikipedia Tangible user interfaces (TUIs) -- person interacts with digital information through the physical environment – mostly Hiroshi Ishii Formerly “graspable UIs” Has its own conference series: TEI’14: 8th International Conference on Tangible, Embedded and Embodied Interaction, Munich, Germany, February , 2014 TEI’14 © Brad Myers 2

Definitions, cont. Physical Gadgets Are to physical (tangible) user interfaces what interaction techniques are to graphical user interfaces Adapted from [Greenberg’01] An interaction technique embodied in a physical entity Must be reusable Many other TUIs are tabletop interactions with physical objects sensed on a table with a projector © Brad Myers 3

Scope There are lots of interesting, cute, even useful applications of tangible and ubiquitous user interfaces Most are not interaction techniques E.g., Ambient displays – no interaction Mankoff’s BusMobileBusMobile E.g., Tangible applications – not a reusable widget Bottles that play sounds when opened Bottles © Brad Myers 4

Phidgets Saul Greenberg and Chester Fitchett Phidgets: easy development of physical interfaces through physical widgets. In Proceedings of the 14th annual ACM symposium on User interface software and technology (UIST '01). ACM, pp “Physical widgets” Previously was very difficult to build TUIs Had to build custom hardware and microprocessors Soldering, circuit design (EE), assembly-language programming, etc. Lots of new sensors Encapsulated complexities of using physical objects Lights, motors, sensors, cameras, switches, etc. Mostly USB Interactive since sensors for motion, light, sound, etc. Programmed (originally) in Visual Basic Simulation mode to help with the software Formed a company to market his phidgetsa company Video, 6:10 (2001) Video © Brad Myers 5

Arduino Controllers Started about Single-board microcontroller Open source electronics prototyping platform Now about $9 to $30 each Easy to program and attach devices to New alternatives (from Chris Harrison) If you want to breakout from a phone, there is the IOIO board for android: © Brad Myers 6

Research: Hiroshi Ishii Tangible Media Group: Dozens of projects dating back to 1990projects But most are not “interaction techniques” One that is: John Underkoffler and Hiroshi Ishii Urp: a luminous-tangible workbench for urban planning and design. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '99). ACM, pp Physical tools for measuring, changing building material, turning on wind, changing light paths, etc. © Brad Myers 7

Ishii, cont. Hiroshi Ishii, Dávid Lakatos, Leonardo Bonanni, and Jean-Baptiste Labrune Radical atoms: beyond tangible bits, toward transformable materials. interactions 19, 1 (January 2012), Includes a survey of tangible Uis Lists lots of toolkits to create TUIs “ Tangible design seeks an amalgam of thoughtfully designed interfaces embodied in different materials and forms in the physical world—soft and hard, robust and fragile, wearable and architectural, transient and enduring.” Future: physical-digital “atoms” that can transform, conform and inform E.g., “clay” that changes its own shape based on rules, user commands, & constraints © Brad Myers 8

Current Research: Skweezee Karen Vanderloock, Vero Vanden Abeele, Johan A.K. Suykens, and Luc Geurts The skweezee system: enabling the design and the programming of squeeze interactions. InProceedings of the 26th annual ACM symposium on User interface software and technology(UIST '13). ACM, pp Soft tangible objects, filled with conductive padding and embedded sensors (eight electrodes) Toolkit for defining squeeze gestures by example Learns from a single example © Brad Myers 9

Scott Hudson’s class “Gadgets, Sensors and Activity Recognition in HCI” gadgets-sensors-and-activity-recognition-hci gadgets-sensors-and-activity-recognition-hci Every spring This semester, in WeH 7500 – enormous © Brad Myers 10